X102
Science Revolutions: Plato to Nato
Where did modern science come from? Is it a stockpile of technique
and knowledge that has accumulated slowly and steadily over the
centuries? This course presents a more complex and dynamic picture,
in which the history of science also takes unexpected twists, turns
and conceptual leaps, in response to changing social, political and
religious interests, and to shifting scientific assumptions,
methods, and forms of organization. The course introduces the most
important formative steps in the scientific tradition, each of which
overturned earlier ways of investigating and understanding nature.
These include Aristotelian physics, Ptolmaic astronomy and Galenic
medicine in the ancient and Medieval world; the scientific
revolutions of the 15th- through the 18th centuries that ushered in
Copernican astronomy, Newtonian physics, and new ideas about
physiology and medicine; the chemical and Darwinian revolutions; and
the rise of modern physics and other 20th-century innovations and
problems.
2nd 8 weeks